My empathy is totally fragged. *Totally.*

Pain and anger screw with my empathy, right? Well, lately I've had so much of both of those that I wonder if it's even possible to recover. It's like setting off an EMP directly next to a sensitive measuring device, and the machine that records and interprets its measurements. I'm totally off the charts. The slightest twinge may hit me upside the head, and the strongest and clearest broadcast is mangled and garbled. I was nearly reduced to tears tonight just from two friends staring at each other.

I don't know how to reset my empathy. First of all, I'm still hurt and angry, so I don't know if it's even possible to do right now. Second, it isn't as if I can turn it off. It's like trying to recalibrate a camera when different lights are being flashed at it.

I really hate this feeling. On the one hand, I'm surrounded by the background static of an entire city, feeling just loud enough to grate my nerves and rub me raw. On the other, there's nothing strong or clear -- all my empathic links to people have crashed out. siliconrose and cyfis aren't even a mile away, I think, and I can't feel them at all. It's like when a treasured and valued item that's been in the same place for years is suddenly moved -- there's an ache every time you look at where it once was, even when you know it's somewhere else, it isn't gone.

I'm really very sensitive right now. For example, finding out that siliconrose had been in town for a couple hours without letting me know almost made me break down completely. Issues of friendship, of caring, of trust and faith and hope -- all very, very sensitive topics right now. I just need to find someone, something, to believe in, and I keep looking, and it isn't there.

On top of all of this, I haven't been sleeping well lately. I consider myself lucky to be sleeping at all, but the sleep I've been getting just hasn't been working. I slept for nine hours today and yesterday, and yet I'm still so tired I can barely stay awake. I'm missing those empathic connections, again. I would really very much like someone to curl up with and go to sleep next to. I don't need a girlfriend, just someone I trust and I know cares about me, but unfortunately that just simply an option with the people I know.

I'm doing this day by day. Tomorrow looms ahead, bleak and lonely. I'll just try to get through it. I feel so far away -- so far away from everyone and everything, like I could just drift away into space, forgotten. It's scary, very disturbing, to feel that way.

I need to be not so alone. I feel like I'm still bleeding, and I need to patch these wounds, but I don't know how. It will stop on its own, eventually, and I know it will leave a terrible scar.

I debated with myself today. If I were to seek my own destruction, should I kill the parts of me that love, care, and trust -- or just myself, wholesale? Doing the former would let me be happy, or at least think I was happy, living my life without concern for anyone or anything but myself. On the other hand, just outright dying would be much *easier*, and much more palatable.

I need to feel something other than pain and anger. I need to feel again. I need to be myself again, or give up trying.

The problem with going day by day... is that there's so little hope.

I need hope.